June 25/08 10:50 am - Keven Lacombe Interview

Posted by Editor on 06/25/08

Keven Lacombe Interviewby Amy Smolens

Yesterday, on the opening double stage day of the Tour of Pennsylvania, Kelly Benefits Strategies-Medifast rider Keven Lacombe finished second on the first stage, fourth on the second and is currently second in the general classification. Amy Smolens spoke with Keven after the opening time trial.

Amy Smolens: Everyone was looking toward your teammate, David Veilleux, for this morning's time trial but you were the one on the podium in second place. Were you surprised with your performance?

Keven Lacombe: No, it was good because the effort was kind of the same as a pursuit effort so that was pretty good for me and I just tried to gauge my effort all the way and was pretty good until the end.

AS: Were you pretty excited with a podium place in a TT?

KL: Yeah, but I think that for us the most important is to win races and win maybe the GC. It's good second but it's better to win so we're going to try to do it before the end of the week.

AS: And with you in second and David in fourth in the TT it really shows the strength of your team.

KL: Yeah, exactly. I think we are a pretty good team and we have all the skills to do really well, like the climbers and the sprinters so I think we could do really well by the end of the week.

AS: And you have a couple of options for the sprint. People would expect you to be the primary option in the sprint but then tonight in the criterium Jake Keough, brand new to the team, gets on the podium with another second place.

KL: Yeah, yeah exactly. Jake did really a nice race. It's not like really me, it's the job of everybody. Like Dave (Veilleux) did a really great job today and all the guys, like Ben King did a really good job and so it's just a team effort and I think we are good together so I think it's good for the week. All the team we tried to sprint at the end and we just tried to arrange everything, but we just got screwed by the inside with two corners to go and I think it cost us the win, but Jake did second so it's pretty good and next time, tomorrow we're going to try to win.

AS: And for GC you'll look toward David?

KL: Yeah, exactly - David and maybe Ben King (U.S. National U23 Road Champion) also. It's going to depend a lot on the climbing stage, the stage Thursday, it's going to change a lot of things so we'll see what happens.